Payment by results dropped for mental health

17th September 2013

An article in the Health Service Journal has revealed that the mandatory rollout of a national payment by results (PBR) tariff for mental health care providers has been dropped.

The PBR tariff was designed to cluster patients into 21 categories of various severity of condition ranging from relatively mild depression to psychotic crisis and severe dementia. The idea was that funding would then be attached to the cost of treatment and measures of the outcomes of care. Since first announced, PBR was greeted by a range of concerns, though these centred mostly around data quality, particularly around the minimum mental health data set which would have been used to determine payment.

PBR was initially planned to be in place this year, but was then delayed until April 2014. Monitor have now announced that it will no longer be made mandatory in 2014-15, and has also questioned the long term future of PBR as it reviews the payment systems across the NHS.

In a statement, Monitor said that: “No decision has been made on whether setting national prices in mental health is appropriate in the longer term.”